hen I got home from Ethan’s house, I waited until Dad was asleep. Then I crept into the long skinny hall that we didn’t call a corridor, the wood floor forgivingly quiet under my bare feet, and listened outside the door of the other bedroom. I could hear Jarvis’s deep breathing and Penelope’s faint snore, and I was almost sure I could make out the soft sound of Marie sighing in her sleep. I was the only thing moving in that dark narrow apartment, shadows on exposed-brick walls, with a beam of moonlight and the orange slant of a streetlight filtering through a tall, black-trimmed window.
I stole back into my room and opened my wardrobe, snaking my hand under the mountain of clothes and shoes at the bottom to the very back, where I had hidden the doppelganger’s hood. For a moment, I could not find it, my fingers making a blind, futile journey over the fuzz of a sweater and the rubber sole of a shoe. Then my skin caught on one of the metal slots, fingertips brushing the cracked leather. My rings almost hummed in recognition.
I pulled the collar out and heard the tumble and slam of a dislodged shoe against one of the wardrobe walls. I stayed frozen in a crouch as my father murmured, disturbed and discontent, and then settled back into sleep. My pajama top stuck to my collarbones with sweat.
At the train station, the guards had said somebody who looked like Ethan had been distributing security information to a member of the sans-merci. And a few days later, the cages were shattered and the prisoners had gone free.
Anyone under suspicion of consorting with the sans-merci would be suspected of involvement with the attack on the cages. Ethan was going to be under investigation, and his connection to me would make it worse. The sans-merci were acting in my name: the Light Council might decide we were both in league with rebels.
I knew that I had done nothing, and I was certain Ethan had done nothing. I had another suspect. Carwyn had been talking about revolution and blood in the streets. Carwyn must be involved.
And I had made it easy for him to move about the city, unmarked by his hood, people all around him never dreaming what he was or what he was planning.
I should take this hood and collar to the Light guards, should explain the threat I had unleashed on the city. But what would they do to me then? What would happen to my father without me?
I knew better than to expect mercy.
I wrapped the collar in the hood to muffle any betraying clink of metal, then crawled across the floor with it clutched in my fist, to my school bag. Inside my bag was a small brown leather pouch containing a handful of ashes I had taken from the fireplace in Ethan’s living room. I tucked the doppelganger’s collar into the little bag, blindly fumbling, and then crawled around the side of the wardrobe, to the brick wall.
If I crawled, nobody could see me through the windows. Just in case someone was watching the apartment.
When we had come to Penelope and Jarvis’s, I had been constantly on edge, relentlessly terrified that someone would show up to take back the pardon and take Dad in to be tortured, so terrified that I had burned Dad’s books on Dark magic and the very few letters Aunt Leila had sent. I had never written back to her, and she had soon stopped writing. I spent my time back then, whenever Dad was drugged into calm, scraping away at mortar until I could pull out a couple of the bricks.
If someone looked at this wall, they would have noticed two bricks that were obviously displaced. I had taken a fork to the crevices between those two bricks, and the mortar around them had a slightly gnawed appearance.
The real loose brick was seventeen across and five up from the bottom, in the shadow of the wardrobe. I slid the brick out, feeling its rough edges nip into my palm, to reveal a tiny hollow space. I shoved the pouch almost to the very back, then crammed in ashes, hoping the dull brown of the bag would be entirely obscured even if someone took the brick out.
Although I had burned Aunt Leila’s letters and Dad’s books, I had kept one thing: the pendant necklace with the single jewel my mother had worn and worked magic with in the confines of our home. I didn’t deserve to have a keepsake of her, but I had not been able to leave it or get rid of it.
I had never hidden anything else in there, until then.
I slid the brick back into place, stood up, stepped away, and surveyed the innocent expanse of the wall. Then I came out of the bedroom, pulling the door open and closed as softly as I could, and went to sit on the sofa. I put my guilty head in my ash-stained hands and sat there for what seemed like a long time.
I do not know why I looked up to the silver square of the window, its pale reflection cast on the floor at my feet. Perhaps it was a strange noise, or perhaps it was something the Light Council says all Light magicians have: an innate sense of when the darkness approaches and encroaches on the illumination we give out.
A dead streetlight stood in my line of vision, its magic failed, staring like a socket in which the eye had been put out. As I drew closer to the window, I saw the windows of the buildings across the street, all glossy black save for the sharp lights of cars reflected as they went by. The city was indifferent and distant, as close to sleeping as it ever was.